Who Fears Death is Nnedi Okorafor’s first speculative fiction book for adults. The subject matter is darker and heavier than her previous books targeted toward young adults. The story was inspired by the use of rape in war, where armies raped enemy women. The soldiers did this not just to demoralize them, but with a systematic goal of having the women carry their children. That’s just the start of the subject matter, which also includes misogyny, racial discrimination, genital mutilation, sex, and more. It’s ambitious, and successful with regard to the subject matter.

The main character, Onyesonwu Ubaid, is a mixed child of rape, or Ewu. Onyesonwu’s mother Najeeba lived for years in the desert raising her child before settling in Jwahir, a town far away from the war, rape, and killings between the Nuru and Najeeba’s tribe, the Okeke. The popular view is that Ewu, the children of rape, will always turn to the violence that conceived them, and so they are commonly shunned or worse. Onyesonwu has a difficult childhood, but it pales in comparison to what happens as she reaches adulthood.

Onyesonwu finds that she has the ability to change into various animals. That’s her first clue that she’s different. Her destiny is to be a sorcerer. In addition to her skills, she starts seeing a giant eye watching her. That eye is the magical eye of her raping biological father, himself a sorcerer. She needs Jwahir’s resident sorcerer to train her to be ready to fight her father. He won’t teach her, because he believe that sorcery is not for women! If she cannot become a sorcerer, her eventual confrontation with her father probably won’t go well.

Onyesonwu fights against the discrimination she faces, and does so with the right people. She changes the minds of her friends, as well as many others in Jwahir. When a band of people heads back into the desert, Onyesonwu is the leader. The changes don’t come easy. Her partner Mwiki, while accepting of his place in the heirarchy, struggles with putting aside his prejudices. He wants to. He’s generally successful. But like real life, this change doesn’t happen in one big epiphany. Sometimes his behavior doesn’t measure up to his ideals.

While I love how Okorafor deals with the themes, I did have problems with understanding characters’ motivations for specific actions and with the quest structure. The problem with the latter, is that it often resulted in disjointed episodes rather than a seamless narrative. The characters encounter one obstacle, finish with it, then move on to the next discrete obstacle. That was my big issue with The Shadow Speaker as well. I also often found myself scratching my head wondering why a character did something particular. Sometimes it would be explained afterward, sometimes not. Despite the first person narrative, I usually felt outside of Onyesonwu’s thinking.

As I’ve grown accustomed to expecting, Okorafor builds an imaginative world. It’s loosely tied to her previous books, but the exact relationship isn’t made clear. The appearance of a guide the the Greeny Jungle is a nice inside wink and nod to her previous readers. Magic exists, but so do computers and some other modern trappings, despite what appears to be a reversion (for unknown reasons) to a less technological society. Unlike urban fantasy which also mixes magic and modernity, the supernatural isn’t a seamy underbelly of reality that’s mostly unknown to the moderns who have forgotten their way. Onyesonwu and friends will use both GPS and changing into an animal to find their way, for instance. It wouldn’t have fit with the story at one particular spot, but there’s a point where Onyesonwu and friends arrive in a city, and a picture arose in my mind of them wielding magic against their foes wearing helmets as a band of scooter riding delinquents.

Worth reading. Don’t expect a lot of happy though.

Other blogged reviews:

• The OF Blog
• Today Wendy
• White Readers Meet Black Authors
• From My Bookshelf
• OCD, Vampires, and Rants, oh my!
• Neth Space

Title: Who Fears Death
Author: Nnedi Okorafor
Cover creator: GForce Design (designer)
Imprint / publisher: DAW Books
Format: Hardcover
Length: 386 p.
Publication date: June 2010
ISBN-13: 978-0-7564-0617-2

I really liked Nnedi Okorafor’s Zahrah the Windseeker, and seeing Nnedi Okorafor on a couple of panels at Wiscon made me like her even more. I’d be hard-pressed to think of someone more positive than her. So I picked up The Shadow Speaker at the dealer room.

The Shadow Speaker has a lot in common with Zahrah the Windseeker: a setting that appears in both books, a young female protagonist learning her new powers, male supporting cast, and similarly creative fantastic creatures. All of that was awesome! What wasn’t awesome was the disjointed hero quest plot. Zahrah had to save her friend. Ejii has to save five extra-dimensional worlds from war. Along the way she encounters seemingly random obstacles that seem to be there only to introduce Ejii to her traveling companions. I was disappointed overall.

Ejimofor Ejii Ugabe is a shadow speaker living in magical Kwàmfà in West Africa in 2070. The Great Change, a nuclear war semi-aborted by interfering technology released by a peace group, released magic as a more powerful force than technology. Some people fear meta-humans such as flying wind-seekers and extra-sensory shadow speakers because of superstition and some view them as normal.

The semi-mythical Jaa has ruled Kwàmfà for a few years. She’d established the town and then gone away. During Jaa’s time away, Ejii’s father ruled the village in manner similar to current day Islamic countries, hard and discriminating, before Jaa returned and summarily executed Ejii’s father. Time has passed though, and Jaa heads to a great peace conference in Ginen across the desert and through a dimensional portal. Ejii, no lover of her own father, follows and hopes to join Jaa because the shadows have told her she must go to prevent the war.

The strength of the book is the creativity Okorafor used to create creatures and situations. She included giant sentient sandstorms, talking camels, ostrich-like birds that will carry women but not men, and more.

Ejii is a solid main character, particularly for a girl. She isn’t a cookie cutter stereotype that seems to plague a lot of young adult female characters. She’s smart but not super-brainy. Mostly respectful when she deals with others. Sometimes resourceful, but able to let others such as her fellow school-age shadow speakers help her. In short, I like her. Her traveling companion Dikéogu treats her as an equal or sometimes as his better. He’s charmingly stubborn.

Stubbornness seems to be a prominent characteristic for every character though. In addition, the adults all seem to have a streak of knee-jerk in them that felt extremely false to me. I might not have noticed if it weren’t combined with the mundane plotting.

And that’s the Achilles heel for the book, the plotting. As Ejii journeys, she periodically encounters obstacles, resolves them, and moves on. Episodic is the mold for a hero quest, of course. In this case, each obstacle, whether it’s a group of man-eating cats, a sandstorm, a magician, or a hotel desk clerk, follows a very predictable path and then goes away and Ejii continues her journey. They don’t build on each other, excepting the lesson Ejii learns from each builds on previous lessons. But the events themselves usually just leave Ejii back on her journey having learned her lesson but having advanced no further in her actual quest.

I think lots of people, possibly including the young adults at which the book is targeted, won’t have that reaction to the plot because they will be enjoying the scenery. So I hesitate to unrecommend it. For me though, it was very middle of the road.

Some other blogged reviews:

• Attention Rebellious Jezebels
• Morsie Reads
• Muslimah Media Watch
• Becky’s Book Reviews
• SherMeree’s Musings
• Andy Wolverton

Title: The Shadow Speaker
Author: Nnedi Okorafor-Mbachu
Cover creator: Elizabeth H. Clark (designer) / Luca Trovato and Colin Samuels (photographers)
Imprint / publisher: Jump at the Sun / Disney Hyperion
Format: Paperback
Length: 336 p.
Publication date: 2007
ISBN-13: 978-142310036-2
Subject: Adventure and adventurers — Juvenile fiction
Subject: Adventure and adventurers — Fiction
Subject: Fantasy
Subject: Sahara — Juvenile fiction
Subject: Africa — Juvenile fiction
Subject: Sahara — Fiction
Subject: Africa — Fiction
LC classification: PZ7.O4157 Sh 2007

I vowed in April (or maybe May) to read five of the top ten obscure S.F. works that deserve more attention as selected by Feminist SF. Well, they took their time getting the list out, but they did and I’ve got five of them in hand. I won’t be reading them all in a row. Instead my plan is to alternate them with other books. The first was Nnedi Okorafor-Mbachu’s young adult fantasy Zahrah the Windseeker.

I thought Zahrah the Windseeker was a beautifully imagined fantasy world that has one huge drawback. On the positive and even recommended side overall, but man is that drawback prominent. So let me get it out of the way. The plot is utterly unoriginal and predictable in the worst way.

Zahrah Tsami was born dada, which means primarily she has funky hair and people think she will be a witch or rebellious at least. Turns out it means she can fly as she finds out when she floats up from bed a few times. She and her best friend Dari sneak a little ways into the Forbidden Greeny Jungle which surrounds the Ooni Kingdom so that Zahrah can practice flying. There Dari is bit by an exotic animal and falls into a coma. Before recriminations can go too far, Zahrah sneaks back into the jungle on a quest for an unfertilized elgort egg, said to be the only thing with the properties that can save her friend Dari.

On the other hand, the setting is done incredibly well and originally. The Ooni Kingdom is mostly plant based; computers and mirrors and other gadgets are grown from plants. The plant and animals that inhabit the Kingdom and the Greeny Jungle are a good combination of real world (like the baobab tree) and fantastic (pink frogs that know the future). My favorite of course was the giant venus flytrap like plant that ate a deer in front of Zahrah. I need to get me a venus flytrap for my place. The idea of plants turning the tables on animals thrills me (as long as it’s not me).

I also loved the Zahrah and Dari characters. Neither were pig-headed in a way that adults often write teens. I can’t think of an example that compares to these two characters, but what comes to mind is how bullies are often written, as if they have nothing better to do than torment others. The couple of female bullies that make an appearance in the book act more with disdain than with purpose. Other than Dari being the popular kid befriending the unpopular one, I think the author did her teens well.

And lastly, Zahrah the Windseeker does a much better job at pushing nature than some other attempts I’ve read recently (I’m calling you out Isabel Allende). Rather than a force for good, it’s described more as something that simply is. A very powerful something. But something that has both good and bad faces, while civilization also has good and bad aspects. One doesn’t simply jut go out into the jungle and live happily ever after. Things in the jungle are used (particularly by medicine) to good effect. Gorillas in the jungle have their own civilization. They don’t just commune with nature, they build towns. In other words, everything flows well and you don’t get beat over the head with nature good.

If only the plot was less predictable, this would be my favorite young adult fantasy.

Title: Zahrah the Windseeker
Author: Nnedi Okorafor-Mbachu
Cover creator: Sheila Smallwood; Carol Chu (designers)
Imprint / publisher: Graphia Books / Houghton Mifflin
Format: Paperback
Length: 308 p.
Publication date: 2005
ISBN-10: 0-547-02028-7
ISBN-13: 978-0-547-02028-0
Subject: Adventures and adventurers — Fiction
Subject: Coming of age — Fiction
Subject: Flight — Fiction
Subject: Best friends — Fiction
Subject: Jungles — Fiction
Subject: Fantasy
LC classification: PZ7.O4157Zah 2005